


In Other Words

by viiaitch



Category: Bleach
Genre: Dimension Travel, M/M, UraIchi Week 2019, please help i don't know what i'm doing writing kisuke is hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 05:06:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18910156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viiaitch/pseuds/viiaitch
Summary: In other words, Kisuke is screwed. His world is screwed. Maybe this world too, hell, if anyone could mess it up beyond all repair, it's Kisuke.The only thing to do is try to find a way back, even if everything here is so much easier, more peaceful, just all around... better.





	In Other Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi please be gentle i love bleach and i love this ship but it’s been literal years since i was active in the fandom in any way shape or form. how do i urahara. send help
> 
> (wow only day 2 and i’m already behind nice going) (technically day 3 it’s past midnight here oops)

Kisuke wakes up, and everything is immediately wrong.

 

Had he been maybe just a century younger, he would have leapt up from the bed-  _ bed,  _ not futon, and that’s just another thing to add to the constantly growing list of  _ this is not how things are supposed to be-  _ and had Benihime in his hand in an instant.

 

But Kisuke  _ does  _ have a century on his past self, and lets his eyes blink open slowly, lets his body move leisurely as he sits up, stretches with deliberate carelessness- even if every fiber of his being is alert to his surroundings.

 

There’s no reiatsu in the air, save for Kisuke’s own. There’s no distant thrum coming from the Kurosaki household, no little spikes as hollows appear and shinigami dispatch them, no feeling of Tessai’s familiar signature in the air.

 

It’s just… empty.

 

There’s absolutely nothing and if that isn’t the most suspicious and disconcerting thing, Kisuke doesn’t know what is.

 

Benihime is a reassuring hum in the back of his head, at least, which mostly offsets the rush of adrenaline when he registers that the cane he grabbed from the bedside is just that- a cane. No sword hidden inside, no Benihime nagging him to unsheathe her and reduce his enemies to collections of blood and rent flesh, just some average wood worn smooth and contoured to his hand perfectly. Like he’d been using it for years.

 

Something is entirely wrong, and so obviously, the only course of action is to stick his nose in whatever supernatural fuckery is going on this time, because Kisuke might be wary and is certain something probably sinister is going on, but he’s nothing if not good at interfering with shady business affecting the spirit world.

 

Even if it all still feels just  _ wrong,  _ at least the items in the room seem to be… suited to Kisuke. He wouldn’t go so far as to call anything here  _ his,  _ because it’s pretty obvious this isn’t his home in Karakura, but the clothes in the closet, the discarded carelessly on the desk, the fan he finds in one of the pockets of a coat, even things like the type of toothpaste in the bathroom.

 

Whoever did this didn’t gloss over the details.

 

They’re no idiot, so then why leave a tell as obvious as… whatever this reiatsu blocking phenomenon?

 

By the time Kisuke is dressed in his not-clothes and out of his not-bedroom, he has even more questions than he did waking up, and most of them begin with  _ why. _

 

What does doing this, transplanting Kisuke somewhere so obviously wrong despite the apparent efforts to make it similar to what he knows, accomplish? Why would someone put in this level of effort and detail into making a false home, and then leave such obvious tells that it’s not what it seems?

 

The rest of the shop seems normal, if… empty. No Tessai, no Ururu and Jinta, either in reiatsu signature or physical presence.

 

Normal, up until Kisuke gets a look at the stock.

 

There’s no shinigami stock. No sign of mod souls or gigai or anything of the sort.

 

It doesn’t help that the absolute emptiness of the Urahara Shoten remains steady and completely devoid of any sign of life.

 

Kisuke is starting to have a thought- ridiculous and improbable, but persistent- about what’s going on now, and what it could mean for him now and all the people, shinigami and human alike, back where he should be.

 

“Well fuck.”

 

* * *

 

Dimensional travel is nothing new for shinigami. How else would they make their way to the world of the living, after all? No, it’s something rather mundane, like trains are to those on earth.

 

What  _ is  _ new is the proof of parallel dimensions- different versions of the dimensions known, mirrored in some ways but not all. Of course, it’s something Kisuke had considered at various points- he considered a lot of things while biding his time outside of soul society- but that was all just theoretical. Almost more philosophical in nature than real.

 

And yet.

 

Kisuke keeps his mind open to alternative explanations as he combs through every inch of the Urahara Shoten, as he stretches his senses to the limits, as he searches for any sign of  _ anything  _ soul society related.

 

But there’s nothing.

 

Staring up at the almost-familiar ceiling, boxes of merchandise scattered about the floor of the shop, Kisuke can’t help but wonder if the him from this world has woken up to find himself in a world of powerful souls and ridiculously destructive battles and  _ Kisuke really needs to get back before anything bad happens- _

 

“Oi, geta-boshi, you have that-” Kisuke very carefully doesn’t startle, but it’s disconcerting, having  _ Ichigo Kurosaki  _ sneak up on him, no monstrous level of reiatsu flooding his path long before he appears.

 

“...that… ok, what the fuck are you doing?”

 

Kisuke blinks up at Ichigo in his most innocent and charming way, layering on the innocence as he pretends that sitting in the middle of your self-ransacked shop is a completely normal thing to be doing in the middle of the day.

 

“Oh, Kurosaki-kun! What a pleasure it is to have you stop by,” Kisuke chirps, and with barely a thought his fan finds its way to his hand, a comforting weight, especially without Benihime’s physical form present. “I’m afraid I just lost something of mine, and oh, silly me, I seem to have made a mess.”

 

Ichigo stares at Kisuke with enough intensity to melt iron, but Kisuke has stood in the corrosive aura of shinigami reiatsu being overtaken by that of hollows, has weathered a hundred years of exile, and for as impressive as Ichigo’s face can be, it’s nothing he can’t handle, or hasn’t handled before- Ichigo honestly has a lot more reasons to glare down Kisuke back in his home dimension than he probably does here.

 

And in a way, it’s comforting. At least Ichigo is the same… spiritual powers notwithstanding. 

 

“...told you already to knock that cheery shopkeeper act off when I’m around,” Ichigo eventually settles on, shuffling around random piles of junk left out on the floor. “It’s goddamn creepy.”

 

Kisuke has several questions, none of which he can ask without coming off as crazy- and not in the charming, quirky way, but in the way that would get him institutionalized.

 

Other Kisuke is close enough to Ichigo for him to not put up his shopkeeper persona, but still has such a personality that he uses when in the shop. Other Kisuke has been close to Ichigo long enough for this to be a well worn argument.

 

Ichigo drops down to his knees in front of Kisuke, and the crease in his brow that seemed so permanent back in the world Kisuke is supposed to be in smooths out and disappears.

 

He looks so young, and not for the first time, Kisuke feels a pang of guilt for the weight Kisuke has made him carry. The fate of multiple worlds resting on your shoulders would be a lot for even the most seasoned captains, let alone a human pushed into a world he didn’t understand and given power he didn’t know how to use.

 

“Kisuke.” Ichigo’s voice is weirdly quiet- this is the boy who’s always yelling at him, cursing him out and demanding help and training of him, why is he speaking so quietly, so carefully? Why is he using Kisuke’s first name? Why- “Kisuke!”

 

This world is getting under Kisuke’s skin far too easily. Possibly a side effect of whatever process got him here, he notes distantly.

 

Then, all thoughts stop when a pair of lips press to his in a motion that is obviously practiced.

 

_ What the hell has the Kisuke of this world been up to.  _

 

“Don’t go getting all senile on me, old man,” Ichigo’s words brush warmly across Kisuke’s lips and cheek, and it doesn’t take as much effort as it really should for him to not tense up, to stay relaxed, to play along. 

 

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Kisuke replies, as his mind starts up again and begins racing to catch up with what just happened.

 

Ichigo kissed him- Kisuke the shinigami, imposter of the Kisuke of this world, who arguably shouldn’t be ok with this either because even without the several centuries of age difference, in this world, this mundane human world, there has to be at least a few decades, right?

 

Ichigo’s eyes narrow as Kisuke shoots him his best charming smile, and all those years of practice with deceit are finally paying off, since Ichigo ends up huffing and rolling his eyes as he sits back on his heels.

 

“We sitting on the floor all day or what?”

 

And Kisuke can’t help but huff in amusement, without the need to lie. 

 

Even with everything else, it’s still Ichigo. And in this world, another Kisuke cares about him, far more than Kisuke has allowed himself to back home.

 

He knows he needs to go back. He knows that if the Kisuke from this world switched places with him, it’s possibly even worse news than if he simply disappeared. He knows that this bizarre, slightly different Ichigo is not the one he knows, and definitely not anyone he deserves.

 

But this is a world where it seems like there’s actual potential for happiness, and no huge looming wars, at least not of the multiple world ending variety.

 

And fuck if Kisuke is going to mess up a chance at happiness, even if it’s for a different version of himself, even if it’s inexplicably with Ichigo.

 

So Kisuke does what he’s been doing for over a century: lies and bullshits.

 

“No no, sorry about that. Some inventory got mixed up, and I wasn’t expecting you until later. Ah, you had something come in, right… Ichigo?”

**Author's Note:**

> hey this was originally just gonna be a collection of one-offs for uraichi week (which i am still trying to do!! even though i'm, behind,), but i liked how this turned out and some friends lovingly bullied me into deciding to write more of this particular story- so now each uraichi day will have its own fic.
> 
> please let this be the only one i continue writing i don't need more sleepless nights of writing inspiration


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